Poetry Night, First Grade
There you are in a folding chair
watching your daughter, who’s six
climb the stairs to face the audience
on poetry night. Lovely and slender
she moves towards the mike
the room hushed;
parents whisper and sigh
at her missing front teeth
when she starts to read. Six lines
that’s all it takes
and for one minute on a Tuesday night
your daughter reads her poem
and when she smiles at you from across the stage
all the tangled strings of your life
neatly fold like fingers into a contented lap
and everything makes perfect sense.
For Samantha, at Five
The shock only yesterday
of fine-spun you, so small in my arms
Now I watch you dance
tie your shoe
nurse dolls at your chest
You are in this short span
already snapshots-in-time:
the charcoal clouds of your sonogram
the cold-tile fear of three days’ watched pain
the red-faced stranger clutching at first breath
I close my eyes and see clock hands spinning
feel their vibrations down to the bone–
images rising like steam from the kettle
there once
then nothing to hold.
First Date, ‘92
I don’t mean that time in the diner
when I bought you a ham sandwich
before I’d ever heard the term “vegan”
and I don’t mean that morning at Rutgers
when our fingers touched with electrified promise
and I said to myself
“never for me, only if…maybe…”
And I don’t mean that day we walked down
Halsey Street, and had tofu stew in a steamy restaurant
and sat near the sun-gleamed windows, watching
Newark pass by as the owner watched us, smiling
the way people do when they see a young couple
with children: No. I mean that night you drove your Jeep
through the tangled streets of my tree-lined town
and you brought brown rice tea
and charmed my parents
and we lit candles in my room
and you let me turn off the lights, trustingly
and we lay talking in the flickering dark and felt the earth
shift, ready or not, towards our everything.
The Moment
There you are by the Bodensee
on the Swiss side, where the lake and the river convene.
You’re alone. And you’re twenty years old.
There’s a bible in your pocket
because you think you’re born again
you just spent a week with a girl in Spain
and in three days you’ll be on People’s Express
heading home to friends who won’t know you anymore.
So this is it, the moment when everything before came to an end
and everything else after it began.
When you next look up –
there’s a ring on your finger
you’re mowing your own lawn
you’re sending your daughter to school
with her pigtails and missing tooth
that makes you wince with joy.
Your hair is gone.
You lie in bed in the morning gloom
counting costs you can’t meet
while the faucet drips down the hall.
Divorce threatens darkly over all.
So this is it, the moment when everything before
came to an end –
Back at the Rhine, you open your bible
in the alpine air, then put it away with a smile.
Maybe you’re a Buddhist now
so you settle back to watch a fisherman
cast his pole in the water over and over again
like possibility.
I Dreamt About My Father, Young
he came to me in the shadows one night
his cologne sweet in the air
his whiskers rough as he said goodbye
and then I was ten years old again
seeking him out shyly for a catch
watching him work wrench, pulley and paint
feeling again that buzz and delight
at the garage door rumble
bringing him home at night
and sitting on the edge of his bed
as he put jacket, tie and sweater
back into that dim closet
I’ll roam when he has gone.
Get an Apartment in New York, Karen
and I’ll take the train
two subways, walk ten blocks
just to see you
we can crack a bottle of wine
and laugh at nothing
or talk about mom and dad
and how we survived them.
I could bring my girls, or I could come alone
like I used to, when I’d borrow mom’s car
after classes, truck over the GW
to meet for lunch
and stroll Rachel along the iron and ivy
of the Upper East Side, sparkling by the river
with the nannies and other new moms
like out of a Cheever story.
That was before our parents sold the house
before you moved away
or had a daughter in college
for God’s sake
back when we’d never have let
all these years pass without a visit.
Get an apartment in New York
Karen, it’s getting late.
Walking with Ursula
Ursula, who’s four, stops to smell the flowers
every one of them.
First she checks for bees,
then cups a bulb in both hands,
sinks in nose-deep, and breathes.
“Mmmm,” she says, tapping her belly
as if for cake. “Are flowers from people
or the earth?” she asks, and waits as I ponder
this profundity, then sees ice cream instead
so soon we’re strolling around Palmer Square
double-dipped vanilla down her arms, in her hair
to the tips of her toes, which peek out of flip-flops
with rainbows on them. As we pass
I see people nudge one another, point at my daughter
who is anointed by ice cream on a Sunday afternoon
in her blue summer dress, and they smile at her
at me, at each other, delighted
as by a field of flowers.
Palisades Portrait, ‘74
A leafy hike, an autumn day
trailing behind my parents’ backs
hunting for treasures or that elusive stone
with a ring of white to stripe the gray
for wishing on.
Up the path, my mother’s hair
pulled back like a girl’s
falls to my father’s arm
holding tightly around her waist
Manhattan, dark and brooding, looms beyond.
I see them now, aside towering cliffs
walking towards oblivion:
My father, side-burned and sure in faded jeans
snapping photos with his Nikon;
my mother, flowered dress and doe-eyed pretty
smiling into a Kodachrome sun
of orange and red through falling leaves.
All poems copyright ©Eric Heller, unless otherwise indicated.